That’s why I’m starting to prefer LTSC.
data1701d
joined 8 months ago
I think distros at least do some stuff beyond repackaging the latest software, namely default configurations (or lack thereof).
For instance, technically Debian has the packages to do SELinux, but it's Fedora (and OpenSUSE, I think?) that actually come out the box with them.
They are also continually improving, if slowly, their package managers to improve the experience of sourcing new software, as seen with work on apt and dnf.
You are right overall that new distro releases have little meaning any more. If anything, I think they are a good method for managing the upgrades to new software; when a release comes out, breakages can be addresses all at once and solved for a couple of years, whereas rolling release requires a person to be vigilant and repair breakages more often. That is not to pan rolling - I use Debian Testing on my desktop. As much as I like newer software, though, I am thinking of staying on Trixie after it becomes stable, as I get tired of applying updates all the time and then something breaking that is incredible difficult to diagnose.
Yeh, something is borked with your network settings. The port that's connected seems to be trying to connect over IPv6, but unless you're doing something weird, it should be IPv4 It should be in your network settings GUI.
Maybe Netrek?
That's the one I prefer - the game's public domain and has many variants. It was a fan game originally written in BASIC for the PDP-11, I believe, and has been ported many times.
If ip a shows your NIC, I'd recommend checking your networking settings (you can do this via GUI in your DE's settings) to see if everything is set correctly e.g is automatic DHCP enabled? (It seems so, based on the error messages. That's just an example.)
I had a situation the other day where my laptop ethernet port was being assigned to an oddball subnet that had no network connection. As it turned out, I had set the port to share internet in order to set up a Google TV (my dorm network requires a MAC address, but the TV had an old version where you couldn't get the MAC address until after TV setup, which required a network connect) and had never reversed the setting.
That's not necessarily the problem here.
Normally, Fedora would boot on both types of systems, too. However, OP wants to copy an already-existing UEFI install or at least the config to a legacy system, not (necessarily) to find a distro that could be installed from a normal live installer on both boot types.
Thus the Nix recommendations, as theoretically, one centralized config could be copied between systems to create a similar environment on different systems.
I just discovered the source of all your problems by reading your previous post.
The Surface Go 1 is a UEFI system. The Acer Aspire 5737z is a legacy BIOS system and thus can't boot UEFI partitions. If your Aspire was a UEFI system, what you did probably would have worked just fine - no need for a special snazzy distro (no offense, NixOS users).
I'm actually extremely surprised no one noticed this before me.
From here, you have a few routes:
- Flash the install to the drive, and try to downgrade it to a legacy BIOS system.
- I would not recommend doing this. Your life will probably become a living nightmare. If you love pain, though, here's a forum post to get you started: https://askubuntu.com/questions/910409/change-from-uefi-to-legacy
- Reinstall Fedora and copy just your Gnome config over - from what I can tell, it's just a few directories.
- This is a Python script that says it exports all that crap for you, but what do I know? I just use XFCE.
- Buy a slightly newer device (maybe 2012/2013-ish at the earlist, probably originally designed for Windows 8.x) that support UEFI so you could just use the image.
- Honestly, I am a bit conflicted on this option, as I don't exactly like not reusing the Aspire. However, this may be the easiest way out, and maybe you could put the Aspire to use as a server in a home lab instead.
- Try NixOS like others have been saying. Learning things is fun when you have the time - I don't, and so stick with Debian.
What themes do you have installed, and which theme are you trying to switch to? Also, can you confirm what distro and DE you're using as well as any major customizations so I can try and replicate the problem in an Arch VM, please?
Before I continue, you should probably specify your budget explicitly.
With that said, almost anything older than a few years should do what you need to just fine. I have a Lenovo Yoga 710 from 2016 that works decent, and had an old Fujitsu Lifebook from 2010 that wasn't too shabby as well. Heck, I once booted Linux off a cheap piano black Toshiba laptop originally made for Vista.
Just choose a random old laptop and you'll most likely be good.
Question: What are you developing?
With that said, NixOS would probably be fine, if not better than fine. From what I can tell, I don't think Guix would be a good idea - the packages appear out of date, according to their package manager. They're still on Python 3.10.
However, I might recommend Debian Testing to you for your purposes. Most of the time, packages are pretty recent, maybe a few months old at the most (sometimes just a few weeks), but you still get most of the stability of regular Debian. The only asterisk is when the freeze happens. I think apt may have gotten some updates as well.
I've been using it on my desktop PC for over two-and-a-half years. I will say I have grown a bit weary of it, as it gets so many updates and software changes so fast. On my laptop, I went with stable and plan to switch or stable on my desktop once Trixie gets stable.
In brief, Testing isn't bad. I'd almost recommend a development VM.
How are you guys pronouncing this?
Personally, I’ve found it sounds kind of nice when said like “Loon tea”.